Part 12

“If you follow my advice, first of all I shall show you many works of men of old, tell you their wondrous deeds and words, and make you conversant with almost all knowledge, and I shall ornament your soul, which concerns you most, with many noble adornments—temperance, justice, piety, kindliness, reasonableness, understanding, steadfastness, love of all that is beautiful, ardour towards all that is sublime; for these are the truly flawless jewels of the soul. Nothing that came to pass of old will escape you, and nothing that must now come to pass; nay, you will even foresee the future with me. In a word, I shall speedily teach you everything that there is, whether it pertains to the gods or to man.”[295]

Moreover, he will dress with distinction, will speak with eloquence. Finally he may became as famous as Demosthenes or Aeschines. He must recall that Socrates left sculpture for philosophy.

Lucian on hearing these two appeals gave himself to Education, who then took him in a car with winged horses and from the air showed him the cities and peoples of the world. After this vision she clothed him suitably and returned him to his home. Lucian says he has told this dream “in order that those who are young may take the better direction and cleave to education, above all if poverty is making any one of them faint-hearted.”[296]

Now although this choice of Lucian is based on the choice of Hercules[297] and although facts are clothed in fantasy, the picture of Lucian’s early apprenticeship may well be true, for the boy’s delight in modelling little figures of wax seems to forecast Lucian’s life-long interest in sculpture and other art forms.

The next crisis in Lucian’s literary life is depicted in _The Double Indictment_, a dialogue composed when the author was forty. In it Lucian appears in court to answer two charges: one of the rhetoricians, for giving up speech-making and essay-writing; the other of the philosophers, for using their sacred Platonic dialogue for satire. Lucian’s trial takes place on the Areopagus with Justice presiding, but the dialogue opens in heaven with a long complaint by Zeus about the hard life of the gods especially his own, no time for anything. Hermes who is listening tells him frankly that there are many complaints among mortals on earth because of the slowness of the law courts. Zeus then sends Hermes down to proclaim a session and orders Justice to preside at it.

At this court, after various cases have been wittily disposed of, the Syrian is called to face two indictments: Oratory versus the Syrian for neglect, Dialogue versus the Syrian for maltreatment. Oratory first relates how she found the plaintiff as a lad wandering in Ionia, speaking with a foreign accent, dressed as a Syrian. She educated him and at his eager request married him although all his dowry was wonderful speeches. Next she had him made a citizen and then went travelling with him to Greece, Ionia, Italy and Gaul. As he became famous, he grew indifferent to her, for he was enamored of a bearded man, Dialogue, said to be the son of Philosophy. Now he no longer makes speeches, but has a strange way of using short questions. She sues him for desertion. The Syrian replies that all her facts are true, but there are others; she lost her modesty, made up like a courtesan, flirted indiscriminately with many lovers. So he separated from her and went to live with a respectable gentleman, Dialogue. The Syrian won the case.

Next Dialogue pleaded. His dignity, his cosmic thoughts, his tragic mask have all been stolen from him. He has been forced to associate with Jest, Satire, Cynicism, Eupolis and Aristophanes, “terrible men for mocking at all that is holy and scoffing at all that is right,” finally too even with Menippus. He has been transformed into a monster not homogeneous but Centaur-like. The Syrian in reply showed the benefits which he had bestowed on Dialogue: he taught him to walk like a man, to clean up, to smile, to be yoked with Comedy. Dialogue resents that the Syrian will not indulge in endless arguments on subtle themes. The Syrian declares that he has not taken off Dialogue’s Greek cloak and put him into barbarian garb: Dialogue is still dressed in his native Greek costume. The Syrian was unanimously acquitted much to the delight of the audience. This mock-trial picturesquely portrays Lucian’s change from writing the philosophical dialogues in the style of Plato to the satiric dialogue, influenced successively by New Attic Comedy, Menippus and Old Attic Comedy.[298] Lucian here is writing an Apology for the new style of satire-dialogue which he created.

With similar wit but in various modes Lucian in other pieces satirizes now Rhetoric, now Philosophy. An illuminating series of such dialogues is _The Professor of Oratory_, _Nigrinus_, _Philosophies for Sale_, _The Fisherman_.

In _The Professor of Oratory_ ironic advice is given to a young man on how to become an orator and a sophist. The quest is noble and the way to success is not difficult. The Lady Rhetoric sits fair and desirable on the top of a high mountain attended by Wealth, Fame and Power. Thither two roads lead. One is a narrow, steep and thorny path, the other an easy slope amid flowers and fountains. Two guides will present themselves to you. One, vigorous and manly, will point out to you the hard way in the footprints of Demosthenes and Plato and will tell how severe the training must be for their followers. He will wish, the simpleton, to make you model yourself on the past.

The other guide is a pretty gentleman, daintily groomed and perfumed, with an alluring smile and a honey voice. He will tell you that you can become such an orator as he is if you carry as equipment ignorance, boldness, shamelessness; if you dress in bright, diaphanous robes and always carry a book! Your course of study will be the memorizing of a few stock words, a few learned references for ornaments of your discourse. He will teach you a high singsong chant and the art of always beginning with stories from the Iliad.

Your fame will be secured by a well-trained chorus of applauders in your audiences and by slanders of all your rivals. In private life you must live fast with dice, wine and women, so you come to be talked of as a deuce of a fellow, and amours will increase your income. Thus you will be fitted to be the bridegroom of Rhetoric by driving furiously the winged chariot of which Plato wrote. Your adviser is already getting out of your way, for he was defeated when once you chose the primrose path. This picture of _The Perfect Rhetorician_ has been thought by some critics to be a personal satire of the contemporary lexicographer Pollux. However that may be, it is certainly a satire of any pseudo-professor of rhetoric who bases oratory on cheap externalities and superficial training.

At another time Lucian was to satirize pseudo-philosophers as he had rhetoricians, but once, perhaps in the beginning of revolt against rhetoric, he chose to picture a noble type in the dialogue on Nigrinus, a philosopher unknown except through Lucian. His great tribute to Nigrinus may be set as a companion piece to the mocking praise of _The Perfect Rhetorician_. The dialogue is prefaced by an introductory letter in which Lucian tells Nigrinus that he is not carrying owls to Athens in offering him this book as if to display his use of words, but he is sending it in thanks for Nigrinus’ words. In the dialogue itself one man relates to another how by talking with Nigrinus he was made free instead of a slave, poor instead of rich. For Nigrinus praised philosophy and the freedom it gives and ridiculed what men in general exalt: wealth, fame, power, honor. Nigrinus praised Athens because there Poverty and Philosophy are foster-brothers; there life is free, noble, harmonious. Rome is the city for those who love wealth and luxury, wine and women. The Romans have given themselves over to the pleasures of the senses and have every means of gratifying them. So Nigrinus in Rome leads a life of retirement, conversing with Philosophy and with Plato, reflecting on the ridiculous rich, the parasites, the pseudo-philosophers, the will-hunters, the gourmands, the frequenters of the circus and the baths. No wonder men come to him for healing.

The tribute to Platonism here, the tribute to Epicurus in _Alexander the False Prophet_,[299] might tempt readers to affiliate Lucian with one or the other of these philosophical schools. But as if to forestall being labelled, in the spirit of Horace’s famous line

nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,[300]

Lucian turns his satire on all the leading creeds of the time in his _Philosophies for Sale_.

Zeus orders an auction of philosophies. Hermes acts as crier and auctioneer. The buyer questions each person who is put up for sale on his knowledge, on his creed, on his use. A Pythagorean is put up first by Hermes who asks: “Who wishes to know about the harmony of the world and re-birth?” The Pythagorean attempts to expound to the buyer the catharsis of the spirit, the need of music and of geometry, the flux of the cosmos, the divinity in numbers, the transmigration of souls. An Italian bought him for a brotherhood in Magna Graecia for ten minas.

A Cynic is next displayed, dirty, morose, ready to bark at everyone. He declares that Hercules is his model and that like Hercules he is a militant reformer, working to clear the world of filth. He declares that he will teach his purchaser to discard luxury, to endure hardship, to drink only water, to throw his money into the sea, to reject all family ties, to live in a tomb or a jar. So he will feel no pain even when flogged and will be happier than the Great King. He will be bold, abusive, savage, shameless. For such a life no education is necessary. The Cynic is sold for two obols.

The third called is the Cyrenaic, who appears clad in purple and crowned with a wreath. Hermes announces that his philosophy is the sweetest, indeed thrice blessed. As the Cyrenaic is too drunk to answer questions, Hermes describes his virtues: he is pleasant to live with, congenial to drink with, a companion for amours, and an excellent chef! There was no bid for him!

Next two are put up together, the one who laughs and the one who cries. The first explains his laughter on the ground that all men and all their affairs are ridiculous; all things are folly, a mere drift of atoms. The weeper pities men because their lives are foreordained and in them nothing is stable; men themselves are mere pawns in the game of eternity and the gods are only immortal men. No one bids for the pair.

An Academic next advertises his wares as a teacher of the art of love, but claims that this love is of the soul, not of the body. He affirms that he lives in a city fashioned by himself, where wives are held in common, fair boys are prizes for valor, and realities are ideas, visible only to the wise. He was bought for two talents.

A pupil of the laugher and the drunkard is now offered for sale, namely Epicurus. The mere description of him as more irreverent than his teachers, charming, fond of good eating, sells him for two minas.

The sad philosopher of the Porch is now announced by Hermes who proclaims that he is selling virtue itself and that the Stoic is “the only wise man, the only handsome man, the only just man, brave man, king, orator, rich man, lawgiver, and everything else that there is.”[301] His talk about himself is full of hair-splitting dialectics and subtle explanations of why man must devote himself “to the chief natural goods ... wealth, health, and the like”[301] and go through much toil for much learning. In spite of all this he is bought for twenty minas.

The Peripatetic is also sold for twenty minas because he knows everything but the Sceptic brings in only one mina because he knows nothing! The auction ends with the announcement by Hermes of another sale the next day of plain men, workmen, tradesmen.

Inevitably this ironic treatment of the great philosophies of Greece produced a storm of criticism. This was answered by Lucian in an apology of sorts under the title _The Resurrected or The Fisherman_. In it the satirist under the pseudonym of Frankness faces his accusers. For up from the dead, led by a militant Socrates, come to Athens Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle and other phantoms to execute worthy dooms on the worst of maligners. Frankness by rhetoric and argument averts stoning or crucifixion and secures a fair trial, presided over by Philosophy, who is attended by Truth, Investigation and Virtue. After Diogenes makes the speech for the prosecution, Frankness replies in defense of himself—and Lucian! He wins a unanimous verdict for acquittal by his claim that he auctioned off, not the great philosophers who now prosecute him, but base impostors who imitate them. Syllogism now acts as herald and calls from Athens to court all the philosophers to defend themselves. Frankness by promising largess secures a crowd of them, Platonists, Stoics, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Academics. When Philosophy announces that they are to be tried as impostors by herself, Virtue and Truth, they all disappear in wild rout. To get them back, Frankness now becomes a fisherman and, with bait of gold, hooks and hauls back the craven cheats. The head of each school disowns his imitators and the discarded are thrown down over the cliffs. Finally Philosophy dismisses the court with an injunction to Frankness to keep investigating philosophers in order to crown the true and brand the false.

The genial tone of _Philosophies for Sale_ has entirely vanished in the essay on _The End of Peregrinus_. The influence of New Comedy and of Menippus with their ironic raillery is superseded by Aristophanic denunciation. Bitter mockery, cruel derision are loosed upon one creed, the Cynic. Lucian directs his vituperation against the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus, whose career had been meteoric. In his early life he was converted to Christianity, and even went to prison for his faith. Later, beliefs of India so possessed him that he immolated himself at Olympia just after the Olympic games of A.D. 165. Such self-sacrifice by cremation had been consummated at Susa by Calanus before Alexander the Great and by Zarmarus after initiation into the mysteries at Athens in the presence of Augustus.

Lucian saw only one possible interpretation of Peregrinus’ self-sacrifice, desire for notoriety, but there have been many critics of this motivation as Harmon points out:[302]

“Lucian believes himself to be exposing a sham, whose zeal was not at all for truth but only for applause and renown. Many notable modern critics, including Zeller, Bernays, Croiset, and Wilamowitz, dissent from his interpretation, discerning in the man an earnest seeker after truth; for to them thirst for glory is not an adequate explanation of his final act.”

The piece is written as a letter to Cronius who is marked as a Platonist by the formula of greeting εὖ πράττειν. Lucian begins with the fact of Peregrinus’ self-imposed death and at once ascribes to him the motive of love of notoriety. This, he says, is proved by the fact that Peregrinus selected for the time of his suicide the Olympic festival, which draws great crowds. Lucian knows that Cronius will have a good laugh at the foolishness of the old man so he will write his friend just what he himself saw as he stood near the pyre.

His method is clever. First Theagenes a Cynic proclaimed in the streets of Elis the glory of virtue and the glory of her follower Proteus (Peregrinus) and announced that Proteus was about to leave this life by fire in the manner of Hercules, Aesculapius, Dionysus and Empedocles. Theagenes’ justification of the deed went unheard because of the noise of the crowd, but another orator (clearly Lucian) stepped forth and made a speech reviewing Peregrinus’ career. Beginning with Democritean laughter he narrated the life of Proteus accusing him of adultery as a youth in Armenia, of corrupting a boy in Asia, of strangling his own father, of becoming a Christian in Palestine, of resigning all his property in Parium on the Hellespont, of practicing the ascetic life in Egypt, of seeking notoriety in Greece by denouncing Herodes Atticus for his aqueduct at Olympia and later recanting. Finally, says Lucian, this Proteus has announced his intention of cremating himself. The motive is love of fame though he claims that he wishes thus to teach men to despise death and endure torture. He plainly hopes that myths and a cult will arise around his memory. Indeed Theagenes has quoted a prophecy to that effect, but Lucian can match that oracle with another which orders all the Cynic’s disciples to imitate him even to the last leap into the flames.

After these speeches, Lucian was on hand when the pyre was kindled at Harpina near Olympia shortly after midnight. As an eye-witness he saw the pyre in a pit six feet deep, Peregrinus in the dress of a Cynic bearing a torch, men lighting the fire, how then Peregrinus stripped to his old shirt and after crying: “Spirits of my mother and my father, receive me with goodwill,” leaped into the flames to be seen no more. Even when the other Cynics stood about the pyre in silent grief, Lucian felt no sympathy, but taunted them brutally, and actually got into a broil with them before he departed to meditate on how strange the love of fame is. Lucian had to tell the story of Peregrinus’ death over and over until to amuse himself, he invented a vulture that he saw flying from the flames to heaven, crying: “I have left the earth, I am going to Olympus.” And this invention of his became part of the growing myth about the hero.

“So ended (wrote Lucian) that poor wretch Proteus, a man who (to put it briefly) never fixed his gaze on the verities, but always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude, even to the extent of leaping into fire, when he was sure not to enjoy the praise because he could not hear it.”[303]

Lucian concludes with anecdotes about Peregrinus sea-sick, in a fever, having eye-trouble and trying to cure fever and correct vision as though Aeacus in the lower world would care about either ailment. He was simply furnishing Democritus with more cause for laughter. This heartless ridicule of the Cynic’s action takes no account of the psychology of fanaticism or the hysteria of martyrdom. Croiset points out that Lucian’s insensitivity to all mysticism must be viewed with the knowledge that the satirist believed Peregrinus was a sham and that he was unveiling an impostor. Lucian’s consistent worship of veracity and frankness then explain his derisive attitude towards the apotheosis of a pretender.[304]

The savagery used in exposing a false philosopher was turned by Lucian upon a religious fraud, Alexander of Abonoteichus. The piece is a letter to a friend, Celsus, written after A.D. 180, ten years after Alexander’s death. Lucian’s account gives almost all we know of this Alexander although his existence and influence are attested by gems, coins and inscriptions. The letter, however, as Croiset points out, contains more satire than history, for it does not attempt to distinguish scrupulously between the false and the true; rather it presents in lively anecdotes and personal reminiscences a satiric portrait of an historical prophet.[305] Cumont has commented on the unique features of Abonoteichus’ version of the worship of Aesculapius: the giving a serpent a human head and calling it the god incarnate; the issuing of oracles and advice instead of using incubation or dealing particularly with healing.[306]

Lucian exposes all Alexander’s shams and corruptions. He describes his handsome appearance and education, his cleverness in purchasing a tame serpent and in selecting the site of Abonoteichus for his oracle. He describes the installation of the serpent, the invention of the human head for it, the exhibition of it, the methods of giving oracles, the prices, the publicity, the “autophones,” cunningly contrived to issue from the serpent’s mouth, the spread of his fame even to Italy. Lucian pictures too the perils that menaced any critics of the oracle, the burning of the sayings of Epicurus, the personal danger to himself. Lucian was advised by the governor of Bithynia and Pontus not to prosecute Alexander for his attempted murder so after the prophet’s death he wrote this account to honor Epicurus and to present the truth to thinking minds. Personal revenge then as well as horror at religious fraud motivated this biography. Lucian, who derided Epicureans in _Philosophies for Sale_, chooses now to revere their founder!

One of Lucian’s greatest works bears the title _Parasites for Pay_. It was written and undoubtedly read to the public in the last part of his life before he went to Egypt. It is not only very distinguished as a satire,[307] but in it as Gildersleeve points out[308] “his sensitiveness for Greek honor, for the honor of the people as well as for the honor of the literary class, manifests itself in a way to do infinite credit to Lucian’s heart.” Harmon calls it “a Hogarthian sketch of the life led by educated Greeks who attached themselves to the households of great Roman lords—and ladies.”[309]

The satire is in the form of a letter addressed to a friend Timocles who is thinking of taking such a post. The case, says Lucian, is the same for philosophers, grammarians, rhetoricians, and musicians. The motives which apparently led men to accept such positions are poverty and pleasure, but their recompense is small and they have no share in the luxury that dazzled them. They overwork; their expenses in clothing and tips eat up their stipends. Moreover their humiliations are incessant. The first dinner given in their honor brings the strain of observing proper etiquette. Next morning the conference about salary disappoints all hopes by the pittance offered. But a man sells himself and never afterwards can feel free or noble: he is a monkey with a chain around his neck. For he was not engaged to discourse on Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, but because it looks well to have a distinguished Greek philosopher with a long beard and a flowing robe in his master’s suite. The day’s routine of service is exhausting and humiliating, and the philosopher’s rivals for his lord’s favor are a gigolo, a dancing master, an Alexandrian dwarf who recites erotic verses. The night’s sleep is shattered by meditations on lost freedom and present servitude.

Such is life in the city, but a trip to the country is worse. Thermopolis had to hold his lady’s puppy for her in the jolting carriage and the miserable little dog kept licking his beard for relics of yesterday’s dinner and finally laid a litter of puppies in the philosopher’s cloak. Other services of the parasite include listening to the rich man’s literary compositions and delivering a lecture on philosophy to the lady while her hair is being dressed or at the dinner-table. And in the midst of a discourse on virtue a maid brings her a letter from a paramour which she answers at once with a yes.